An account of a case in which recovery took place after laparotomy had been performed for septic peritonitis due to a perforation of the vermiform appendix : with remarks upon this and allied diseases / by Henry B. Sands.

  • Sands, Henry B. (Henry Berton), 1830-1888.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of a case in which recovery took place after laparotomy had been performed for septic peritonitis due to a perforation of the vermiform appendix : with remarks upon this and allied diseases / by Henry B. Sands. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    bandage completed the dressing, which was left undisturbed for two days. Immediate improvement followed the operation, the tem- perature fell to 98'5° within an hour, and no unfavorable symp- toms occurred to interrupt convalescence. The pulse and tem- perature fell within a few hours to almost the normal standard, and the pain and vomiting disappeared. The iodoform gauze was all removed by the fifth day, but the dressings were renewed daily for three weeks, after which they were changed less often. The temperature rose on two occasions to 100°; at other times it was below 99°. The bowels were cleared out by a laxative on the eighth day, and afterward acted regularly. The sutured intestine remained closed, and the large wound, which scarcely suppurated at all, is now nearly healed, and there seems to he no tendency to hernia. The patient is shown to the society at the present meeting, because he is about to leave New York for his home in North Carolina. Note.—A letter, dated February 20th, has been received from the patient, stating that the wound had entirely closed. As the members are aware, laparotomy for peritonitis due to non-traumatic perforation of the stomach or intestine is a modern operation, the first one having been done by Mikulicz, who performed the operation in 1880,* and re- ported it in 1885. Weir, in 1887,f was able to collect only fifteen cases in which the operation bad been performed for perforative lesions of the intestine not due to traumatic causes. More recently I have known or read of similar cases, but, as my present communication is not intended to be statistical, I do not report them. It may be well to state, however, that out of nine of the fifteen cases reported by Weir, the vermiform appendix was the seat of either per- foration or gangrene, and of these, in four instances the dis- ease of the appendix was not found until after death. A * “ Sammlung kliniseher Vortriige,” No. 262. f “ Med. Record,” xxxi, 662.